Anastasia’s Beverly Hills salon was one of the stops on the Total Beauty Tour and was amazing.  The open layout of the salon is very nice and bright with a stunning array of celebrity clients on the walls.  Clients are consulted and brows are groomed in the main room.  I was suprised to see there are a lot of other services offered from body waxing to facials, you could have all your needs met in one place. 

As a treat we got to watch Anastasia’s brow shaping work first hand. Annie from BellaSugar was chosen for an on the spot brow fix and in a few minutes changed her already beauty-full expression. 

I could not leave without a consult so I basically begged for help and it was granted!  If you had asked me before the consult, I would have said I had bushy brows but after talking to the brow authority I know I have too big a space between them and they are too thin.  How do you like that?  I’m thinking that my subconcious fear of uni-brow has blinded me to the waxers taking off to much in the middle - but no more, I’m going to pay much better attention now.

you learn something new everyday they say

This is a time I wish I had a flair for the artistic so I could draw a diagram, or that I could explain succinctly what Anastasia explained to us so eloquently.  There are two types of eyebrow hair.  Top eyebrow hair grows straight and down, bottom eyebrow hair grows up.  The key to getting a good arch and look is getting some of both of those hairs in your eyebrow so that your brows will stay nice and contained.  It really doesn’t matter the method you use to get the hair off according to Anastasia, tweeze, wax or thread.  And enough of the old advice about not taking off the top hair, it’s so wrong and outdated.  The most essential thing is to get the right combination of upper and lower eyebrow hairs. 

If you can ever make it in to Anastasia’s salon I highly recommend it.  If possilbe grow out your brows so they can really define your arch from scratch.  The price is $80 w/Anastasia herself which is a lot but VERY reasonable considering the demand.  She could charge much more and the rich would pay but she’s keeping the service at a reasonable price point for us average folk in need of a special memory.  The cost is $50 w/an eyebrow specialist.

Check out the Anastasia Salons on the bottom left there are links to International Locations and Find a Store to find someone trained in the technique near you. And if you prefer a DIY approach, I will have product reviews on kits you can use from the convenience of your own home.

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Tags: Anastasia, arch, beauty, Beauty tour, Beverly Hills, brow, brows, eye, eyebrows, shaping, summit 2008, Total Beauty, tour, tweezers

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Two things you never thing of at the same time: Madonna and suckers… somehow her latest album Hard Candy got me to thinking. If there’s any woman on the planet I’d like to go to for beauty advice it would be Madonna.  She’s no sucker or fool and by now she’s seen it all and then some.  If she likes a product or a line, for sure, it’s good.  Madonna’s choice to work long term with Gina Brooke (Artistic Director for shu uemura) speaks volumes about the makeup artist and the line. Follow the four easy steps to create a perfectly flawless look! hints for you, involves my fav lipstick Rouge Unlimited Crystal Shine Collection and eyes of feline.  You can also check out some Access Hollywood footage from the shu uemura homepage.

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Tags: cosmetics, easy steps, gina brooke, make up, makeup, shu, shu uemura, tutorial, uemura

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Lancôme introduced Définicils mascara in 1991, can you believe that?  Where does the time go?  At the time I was attending college in New York and didn’t have a dime to spare on fancy mascara.  My experience comes from a summer in Paris, I think everyone in my family fully expected me to make something fabulash out of myself, so I had to get the “right French” in my head and they sent me to what would be the absolute worst experience in my whole life - EVER - L’Alliance Francaise. Why was it terrible, I was in this fab city, first off I got lost c-o-n-s-a-n-t-l-y and was sitting with all these ”old” studious people who really wanted to be there (remember I was 19 at the time).  Looking back it was incredibly dumb, I was proabably sitting next to futures heads of state from every corner of the earth.  But it was so painful, learning obscure French from an ancient man with 0 personality lecture style.   His main point of contention with me seemed to be that I was 1/2 French and didn’t speak well enough for him, he was much more lenient on the pure “foreigner” or at least that’s how I saw it. 

Of course I ended up cutting a lot of class and hanging out with new found friends at the brasseries, this was super dangerous and I ended up getting “caught” a couple of times by my aunts.  There were some hard feelings all around but they still stuffed my suitcase with lots of goodies! 

Being incredibly chic Parisiennes they couldn’t resist shopping with me as their muse.  The most memorable things were several Cacharel bras and panties, Guerlain compact and lipsticks, Chanel polish, jade jewelry, outfits from Galleries la Fayette, NAF NAF T-shirts and backpack, Chipie and Kookai jeans and sweaters with a gorgeous Le Dropt Briefcase that I still sport, and of course a tube of  Lancôme mascara! 

To be totally honest I have no idea which kind of mascara it was but for this post we’ll assume it was Définicils.  Just hearing Définicils sparked all these memories so that should be good enough, besides it doesn’t matter if you speak French or not to wear it! More than 25 million units of Définicils have been sold, the choice of chic women and discerning make up artists everywhere. You may already know the formula but now there’s a new application tool, ”The High Precision™ brush, with its soft rubber bristles, deposits just the right amount of product for optimum separation and no clumps.” So what are you waiting for? don’t go through what I did to try it.

The Définicils Family
*Définicils: Straight brush coats lashes evenly, from base to tips, for a perfectly defined and separated look.
*Définicils Pro: Curved brush deposits more product at the root of the lash for a fuller look.
*High Définicils: Soft rubber brush offers effortless glide for individually separated and lengthened look.

Retails for $23.95 www.lancome-usa.com, specialty stores, the five Lancôme boutiques and counters nationwide.

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Tags: black, brown, classic, cosmetics, France, French, Lancome, lancome usa, make up, makeup, mascara, paris

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Lash Out against cosmetics companies

Some people around me have told me in the past not to lash out, but I just couldn’t help myself in this case. NO, I didn’t snap, it’s just that I’ve been in my little rut of mascaras, I tried something last month, but what can I say, sometimes new information comes out and you just have to act on it.  For the past few days I’ve been using a new mascara that gives me pretty long lashes effectively AND safe!

Pure Soul Mascara creates luscious lashes that are soft and flexible, no rock hard lashes here!  The application is very light, perfect for every day use but at the same time this is not your everyday mineral cosmetics line. I learned that from the super-cute afterglow vegan kabuki brush I use every day - it’s holding up beautifully by the way.

Back to the Pure Soul Mascara, I even went without taking it off to sleep with no problem.  It didn’t irritate my contact lensed eyes at all.  No smudges on my face or pillow and absolutely no clumps.  A pure joy to wear and I’m even happier to report a company that cares about women’s health.  I used to blindly trust that what is out on the market has been tested and deemed safe but that is def NOT the case.

Organic cosmetics are all the rage right now, there are a lot of choices out there, but like everything else - you get what you pay for.  As a prestige brand, afterglow not only chooses the most natural and safe cosmetics available, they carefully select the source of those ingredients.  Certified Organic Ingredients are used whenever possible. 

Check your makeUP bags please…

Have you ever thought about the chemicals that are in your cosmetics?  are they safe, any side effects, we’ve all heard the loooong disclaimers on the medications advertised on tv, but that is not true with cosmetics.  Just some pretty women modeling the product with very little actual information about the manufacturing process or chemicals used to make the cosmetics.  I for one don’t want them to get away with that anymore, I love that afterglow lists out the ingredients used to make each product!  Speaking of ingredients…

If you’ve got your make up bag handy, does your current mascara contain Thimerosal?  If so it is a mercury-containing organic compound that has been banned around the world but NOT in the US!! Minnesota is the only state so far to ban intentionally added mercury in cosmetics.  “Mercury does cause neurological damage to people even in tiny quantities” said Sen. John Marty.  So check your cosmetics labels, and be sure to replace with something that is safe like pure soul.

Visit afterglow cosmetics  for the best all natural cosmetics, get pretty with safe cosmetics.  Pure Soul Mascara is available in two shades, mink (brown) and onyx (black).  Get glow-ing!

afterglow cosmetics are:

gluten-free, alcohol-free, paraben-free, synthetic dye-free, perfume-free, mercury-free, petrochemical-free, phthalate-free, mineral oil-free, and tar-free! 

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Tags: afterglow, black, brown, cosmetics, eye makeup, eyes, makeup, mascara, mineral, natural, organic, pure soul

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I ran to the drugstore late Friday night to see what I could see, a sort of beauty vision quest.  I don’t get many of those these days so I went up and down every aisle.

During these little escapes it takes a lot for me to take notice.  Most of the products seem like more of the same old stuff, but when I saw the L’Oreal High Intensity Pigment section I stopped dead in my tracks. 

There were so many unusual looking things to tempt me, and intimidate me.  When I bought the HIP cream shadow in ‘witty’ I was not at all sure I would even be able to pull it off, I had to pay because 20/20 was about to come on and surely there would be some type of issue a the counter (I’ll blog about this later).

I’m not a make up artist, or even good at applying eye makeup, I always do the same thing - play it safe, classic.   Saturday’s are all about family, we always go into the city with the kids and do something for them, shop the an early dinner out - so my makeup has to have lasting power.

I got up early to get ready, giving myself plenty of time to goof up my make up.  I was pleasantly surprised by the easy application.  Just squeeze a small amount of the paint in a special well built into the packaging, then use the included paint brush, dip and brush on your eyelids.

It just glides on so smoothy you may get a little overzealous - be very conscious of your brow bone.  It sure is fun painting yourself!

Witty was perfect because it’s a nice taupy color, very neutral and not dark, almost flesh tone on me.  It has a great glitter to it but totally wearable by day.  I let it dry for a second and then put a green MAC eye shadow in the crease and a light cream at the brow.  Anyone can use this, super easy and eliminated the need for a eye shadow primer in my case.  Most importantly it did not crease at all!! I payed $10.xx, push out the tiniest amount possible, because it is so highly pigmented you don’t need much to do both eyelids.

I didn’t look much different, like I said, I pretty much always look the same but it was nice to try something new.  Now  I have the courage to try a new HIP pigment in a bolder color so stay tuned…

PS:  hopefully I’ll find a picture soon, I can’t find one for this product…

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Tags: eye, eye shadow, eyes, high intensity pigment, HIP, L-039oreal, shadow

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